The Defence of Utilitarianism in Early Rawls: A Study of Methodological Development

Jukka Mäkinen and Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila

Utilitas, 2013, vol. 25, issue 1, 1-31

Abstract: Rawls scholarship has not paid much attention to Rawls's early methodological writings so far, pretty much focusing on the reflective equilibrium (RE) which he is understood to have adopted in A Theory of Justice. Nelson Goodman's coherence-theoretical formulations concerning the justification of inductive logic in Fact, Fiction and Forecast have been suggested as the source of the RE. Following Rawls's methodological development in his early works, we shall challenge both these views. Our analysis reveals that the basic elements of RE can be located in his ‘Two Concepts of Rules’ essay. We shall further show that the origins of RE go all the way back to Aristotle's methods of ethics, as RE accords with the methodology entitled saving the appearances (SA) in recent Aristotle scholarship.

Date: 2013
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